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There is no intersections (small review)
Before I begin to criticize the game, I want to note that I am not SWTOR hater. In general, I do not regret time spent on the game but within two months our 16 ppl raid has closed all of the current raid content, and everybody dressed in the best gear currently available in the game. And so I realized that SWTOR does not offer any realy interesting MMO activities beyond. And I want to try to show why.
The bottom line is that any MMO is a set of gaming spheres in which social interaction occurs. For greater clarity, I have identified four basic areas (of course this is a very rough generalization): PvE, PvP, Crafting & Economy, Open world interaction. And that's what I got:
The basis of the living MMO world is that the spheres intersects and influence each other. In SWTOR all spheres exists separately from each other.
For example:
PvP doesn't affect PvE in any way;
you need crafted gear only for preraid short time period;
you do not have any way to affect the world itself (build house, own territory, get economic advantage for controling open PvP zones etc).
And I'm even not speaking about 3-way or 4-way intersections. Playing SWTOR is like playing separate games in one game client and with one chat and interface... it is not what I call MMO. Bring intersections to the game and the set of separate spheres will become one huge biosphere.
Comments
My only discrepincy is that the 'LoL' representation needs to be much biggger.
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
This could be a great discussion for regular general chat because I wonder what other games would look like. Like WoW, Rift, TOR, Vindicus, Aion. It would be cool to see where they fall and maybe have people draw there own. For mine some of those circles would be smaller and others larger.
Talk about a cool concept. It could be like match.com for mmorpg's where you get questions it graphs out those bubbles.
@Opapanax, I meaned that Open World Interaction equals nothing in SWTOR.
Good break down. I agree.
Nicely played sir, right on the money.
A good representation which stands apart from the caustic vitriol I have been seeing on these forums of late re: TOR.
I still love playing SW: TOR, mainly for the story, and I have several alts and a level 50 (though I haven't done much endgame content on him).
Despite having a good time and loving the game, though, I fully agree with your assessment, and I think it's spot on.
I am so happy you started this thread. I posted the snippit below last June during one of our testing phases and everyone thought I was crazy.
My thoughts on long term success...
As mentioned above, I believe an MMO built solely around developer created content is going to be hard pressed to compete with already established games currently available. It is my belief that a strong community is what will drive any future MMO’s success. Building an MMO with this concept in mind is what I feel is needed to attract and retain a strong player base. This is accomplished by building in game mechanics that encourage community interaction. I would envision this as a wheel with each of the main gaming communities perched on the spoke of the wheel. Creating ways for the Pvp / Roleplay / Raiding / Crafting communities to interact, brings that wheel to a close creating a “circle of involvement”.
I think this is a topic well worth discussing not just for TOR but for any up and coming MMO.
This described it perfectly. I'll learn to never buy games at launch, one day.
Yeah, and even the open world is faction segregated V_V
Graph I made some time ago to illustrate that:
My brand new bloggity blog.
Except for crafting nodes and vendors, all world interaction is static. There are very few non-PvE/non-resource creatures.
Go down load Rift on the Rift-Lite. Run around either side, Guardian will be quicker. Get out of the starter area. Play until level 12 or so... LOOK AT THE WORLD.
I looks like a real world. There are all kinds of things that aren't merely static back-drop or crafting resources or PvE NPCs.
There is NO place, Republic or Imperial that comes close to being so visually fleshed out. What's worse, you can go back to EQ2 and see the same thing in Greater Feydark. Which has been pretty much the same since 2006....
Realy nice scheme. Thx!
Originally posted by Abrexus
I think this is a topic well worth discussing not just for TOR but for any up and coming MMO.
Already started thread in general discussion: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/341501/MMORPGs-in-diagrams.html
I would shrink the economy as well. I was on an EGA server and crafted tons of things. I worked my tail off to generate blue and purple plans. The money sink was so great for my Armormech and Armstech that I couldn't even afford speeder training until I was half-way done with Tatooine.
Never sold anything but shells and upgrade parts. Nobody was interested in guns or non-shell armor. And the total number of shells I sold was insignificant to the money I put in...
So I took up slicing. Every character became wealthy and I could buy all the drops I wanted in the GTM if I hadn't been getting lucky with the drops. Which meant something like five or six blue pieces across all my characters. Maybe i spent a 100K... But I could make that in no time... Just keep pumping out those slicing missions and picking up all that free money lying around...
And when I say wealthy... There were guys still grinding the dailies... Some of them were millionaire's in the first month of play and had nothing to spend their money on... I've seen people complain on the BioWare forums, here, other places, they have ten, or more, million in the bank and nothing to buy...
Eventually, everyone's going to be a multi-multi-millionaire and money will be worthless and the economy will end up with hyper-inflation because the ecnoomy is, frankly, a SINGLE PLAYER RPG economy... If you look at it... It's very similar to Dragon Age and not at all like a more stable MMO economy that was designed with economic considerations from the beginning.
You mean where every time you point out a flaw in the game twenty fanboys jump you and you get tired of it and hit back? I agree.
Maybe I should have used graphs instead of detailed analytics, paragraphs, tables, similies and metaphors.
Basically your point is ToR isn't a "sandbox"?
No duh.
Most PvEers strongly prefer that PvP not affect PvE in any way, generally the reverse is also true. Fact is, in very few games does PvP have any effect on PvE, and in none of the ones I can think of that do have an effect is that effect in any way meaningful.
How is crafting only up to starter endgame gear any different than any other game -- save, granted, Eve or Fallen Earth?
And, lastly, outside of Eve and, to a much lesser extent, Fallen Earth, in what AAA MMO are you out building houses, owning territory, or any of the rest?
This gets tiresome. The "accepted wisdom" that ToR is dying -- What, it hasn't gone FtP yet? -- when there is no actual evidence for that is bad enough -- especially when it's so clear that so many desperately want ToR to die, which is beyond pathetic -- but the endless "ToR is bad because it isn't SWGII" crap is so mind bogglingly stupid it's lowering the collective IQ of the universe.
SWG had its day. It failed. ToR's supposed immenent death will not bring it back, so for god's sake give it a rest.
Its as if crafting exists only for your personal enjoyment (timesink) but not for the gameworld? If so, thats a broken game mechanci that I hope is being addressed. I cant imagine that every craftable item has the same fate.
I think the pvp side should also be lol .
swg didn't fail m8 soe wrecked it thankyou go learn some facts before you post again
heh, i got flamed pretty hard for saying this back in september.
Props to Rokoto (thread starter) and DarkPony (open world comparison to wow) for some very insightful comments and illustrations that makes it really easy to understand their point.
As Rokoto said, he doesn't think 3-4 way interaction is needed, but some interaction would be good. If holding points in Ilum gave bonuses to PvP in Warzones you would at least have some interaction there.
If crafting could be used to augment endgame raid gear you would have an interaction there.
I have been following the production of The Secret World quite closely and they have several ideas for interaction between the different spheres. It will be interesting to see how they worked out. Their two previous MMO's have been close, but not succesful. For instance in Anarchy Online you have very good Crafting/PvE interaction, but it's so complex most players don't get it. Age of Conan had Battlekeeps that gave bonuses to PvP, but crashes/lagg, too many Battlekeeps and it was very time consuming to get a siege going made it unsuccessful. We will see on February 24th what Funcom can pull of (lift of NDA) and on April 24th (probable launch date).
Despite sort of enjoying the game with my sub and being a huge star Wars fan, I agree with the theme of this thread. I'm not even high level yet and the game feels very compartmentalised. i've been told that it opens up in later levels and I really do hope so.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
After 6 years I thought I have seen everything on these boards but somehow I keep getting /facepalmed .
BTW what game is the basis of the "Good MMO" chart? Oh please do tell . I am doing to see what game you think is the examplary good MMO. Tell us and lets begin the fun .
Not knowing the OP's intent or what he has experience, but just quickly glancing at his chart I can think of a few games that would perfectly fit into his idealized intersection chart to one degree or another. DAoC and Eve being the two that most closely match it, having a high degree of intersection between pvp and pve.
Of course this does not necesarily predict a good game in any way shape or form. In theory WAR has all the points of intersection that he is looking for. And it is a miserable game.
Good graph and largely I agree with everything you've said.
Unfortunately PvP does affect PvE...at least as far as nerfing classes goes. My main class has already undergone a series of nerfs for PvP reasons when being weakened in PvE was not needed. So there you go, PvP does affect PvE lol.
And obviously separating the mechanics would be the way to go (other MMO's have done it) but Bioware is going the full WoW route and starting the endless class balance treadmill.
Sorry to tell you, but have fun on Tatooine and Hoth because the rest of the zones are filled with annoying maze like walls and restrictions.
EVE? Seriously? Thats a game that fit the graph . I don't know how to argue with that.